Pembroke Hall High came out on top at the Alfred Henry Invitational Football Tournament held at Meadowbrook High School on Saturday, when they topped the five-team competition ahead of the highly fancied Bridgeport High.

A number of pre-season tournaments are being held across the island as schools prepare for the start of the ISSA schoolboy football season; Alfred Henry is one of them. Originally slated to be a six-team, two-zone competition, the late withdrawal of defending champions Thompson Town High forced the organisers to adjust to a round-robin format.

The hosts Meadowbrook High got off to a perfect start with a 3-0 win over Campion College in the first game of the day through goals from Rusean McFarquhar, Justin Reid and Tyqhan Nelson.

Pembroke Hall then got their first win of the day when they clipped Yallahs High 1-0 through an Antoine Davis second-half strike.

Campion put in a much better performance in their second game of the day when they held Bridgeport High to a 0-0 draw before a late goal from Kevon Barrett helped Yallahs secure a 1-0 win over Meadowbrook.

Pembroke Hall then held Bridgeport to a 0-0 draw before Campion secured their second point of the day with another goalless draw, this time against Yallahs.

Pembroke Hall then positioned themselves nicely in the competition when they inflicted the second 3-0 pasting on Campion College, who exited the competition with two losses and two draws.

Things got worse for stuttering Bridgeport when they suffered back-to-back 1-0 losses to Meadowbrook High and then Yallahs High, which saw them exit the tournament without a win and just two points. It was a totally unexpected performance from the former Manning Cup champions.

The final game of the day was between Meadowbrook on six points and Pembroke Hall on seven. The purple and yellow-clad team knew they needed only a draw to win the tournament and their talisman Davis scored the lone goal of the match to secure all three points for the Marvin Thompson-coached team as they finished with three wins and a draw.

Not surprisingly the individual honours went to players from Pembroke Hall and Meadowbrook.

Antoine Davis was the leading scorer with three goals, while his teammate Jermaine Wright was the Best Goalkeeper.

Marvin Williams of Meadowbrook was voted MVP, while his captain Steffon Gregory was named the Best Defender.

Winning coach Marvin Thompson had a few positives to take away from the day.

“I would say it was a very good performance by the boys. We only just came back to camp and we have been preparing for a month now. This tournament means a lot to us and we wanted to use it as a boost towards our Manning Cup programme.

“It was a spirited and much- improved performance in terms of discipline by the team and we will take it in stride as we build our team chemistry among the players. We will strive to maintain a high level of discipline,” he stressed.

Thompson has been coaching Davis for a long time and was pleased with the performance of his striker.

“It is always good to see that you have a goal scorer in your team and once that is there the confidence will be high in that team also. Antoine has been with me from the Under-13 stage and I was pleased with his performance on Saturday.”

Tournament organiser and coach of Meadowbrook High Neo Oxford was pleased with the growth of the three-year-old tournament.

“When we started three years ago we had only three teams. Last year we had four and this year we have improved to five. So we are looking to continue to grow the tournament to a two-day tournament in the future.

“The late withdrawal of Thompson Town forced us to change from a zone format to a round-robin format, but the coaches were happy with that because it meant that each team would play a guaranteed four games. At this stage of the season coaches want as many games as they can get.”

As far as his team’s performance went, Oxford was pleased with how the team is adapting to his new system of play.

“We were looking at certain things from our team, how we face different opposition. One mistake from our team cost us the title, so we will have to look at that, but the team is full of potential. We are growing slowly, we have played a lot of practice matches so far looking at how best we can now manage our new system. We have changed the system somewhat from what we were used to last year.”

The Meadowbrook High old boy is expecting a tough season ahead in the Manning Cup.

“We brought in some quality players into the squad after we lost the core of our squad to Calabar last year, so we are filling gaps where they need to be filled. We have a very tough zone with the likes of Charlie Smith, Camperdown and Norman Manley, so it is going to be a very tough zone for us.”

Next on the agenda for Meadowbrook is the STATHS Cup which kicks off on Friday.